Art works of Italian (Guercino, Leandro Bassano, Francesco Solimena, Lorenzo Bartolini), French (Jules Dupre, Gaspard Dughet, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant), Dutch/Flemish (Frans Hals, Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen van Ostade, Justus Sustermans,
Pieter Claesz), German (Johann Heinrich Roos, Friedrich August von Kaulbach) and Polish (Jan Styka) painters are displayed in the museum.
1648 by the Antwerp-based master
Pieter Claesz, depicting a pewter jug, a ham, a herring and other objects in careful disarray.
Like many in the collection, the exquisite title poem is ekphrastic, borrowing from other arts as if to illustrate that all life is a mere transitory marvel; the poem's subject is the still life painting of
Pieter Claesz (1597-1660).
Only the affluent could afford difficult crops and imports; yet images of opulent tables and extravagant fare, as in the works of Frans Snyders, Nicolaes Gillis,
Pieter Claesz, and many others, also appealed to those with little access to such feasts.
"This has led me to look at Dutch still life and floral painters like
Pieter Claesz and Ambrosius Bosscheart and playfully subvert some of the moral messages that they present."
In the Dutch town of Haarlem in the 1620s, the still life paintings of
Pieter Claesz introduced a more casual arrangement, a wider range of techniques to describe various surfaces and textures, and a commanding subtlety in tone to evoke soft, delicate light.
Though Holcombe has cited Pieter Bruegel, Francisco de Zurbaran, Caravaggio, and Hieronymous Bosch as influences, references to Petrus Christus, Dosso Dossi, and
Pieter Claesz are also readily discernible in her work.
(4) Richard Baker paints summer still lives of sugar and lemonade, fruit baskets and oysters, that are part Balthasar van der Ast, part Rend Magritte, part
Pieter Claesz, and all Giorgio de Chirico.
* Extreme realism interested Dutch artists during the 17th century in the scenes of daily life by Jan Vermeer and still-life paintings by
Pieter Claesz. In 19th-century America, artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins continued this fascination with realism.
Elsewhere, Salomon Lilian's selection of Dutch still lifes, drawn from its fine collection of Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings, includes a richly detailed oil by
Pieter Claesz, regarded as one of the finest still-life painters working in Haarlem (3 May-10 October; Fig.
Fine artists of the period painted these, among them
Pieter Claesz, a master of visual feasts.
For example, the picture of a beaker of beer, a roll, a knife, and a salt herring on a pewter plate by
Pieter Claesz is painted not only with brilliant technical accomplishment, but also with the deepest respect for the world about him: a respect alike for products of nature and for those of man.